The exemplary embodiment relates to public transportation and finds particular application in connection with a system and method for specializing transactions for different service providers.
In conventional public transportation systems, travelers pay for a trip and receive a single or multi-journey ticket which is used to verify that the traveler has paid for the trip. Prepaid tickets can be paper, magnetic or contactless cards or tickets. Such solutions often require substantial investments in infrastructure, including ticket readers, ticket dispensers, and recharging stations. Additionally, the use of tickets can cause delays in boarding of a bus at a busy stop, as each traveler takes time to provide exact change for a ticket or scans a pre-purchased ticket for validation.
More recently, systems have been developed which allow travelers to pay for trips using smart phones which interact with a smart tag located on a transportation vehicle or at one of the stops. The passenger taps the phone on the tag at boarding and/or alighting locations. To minimize the cost of the tags, information on the transactions is sent by the travelers' phones to a central server where invoicing functions are performed. The tag provides the phone with information that is used by the server to compute the price of the trip. The trip price is often based on the boarding and alighting locations and time. One problem with this approach is that passengers sometimes forget to tap on alighting, and are thus charged the maximum fare for the route. Additionally, the system does not facilitate different fare structures, such as reduced rates for families, students, and so forth. Further, since the passenger is not charged until the journey is complete, the approach is not well-suited to long-distance routes, where the service provider may desire to receive payment in advance.
Thus, it would advantageous to provide a system and method for providing the passenger with a method for specializing a transaction at the start of the journey.